Sunnybrook Hospital To Live Tweet Heart Surgery

In an effort to raise awareness about heart disease, Canadian-based Sunnybrook Hospital will be live tweeting heart surgery tomorrow at 8am Eastern.

If you’re interested in watching the surgery, tune in using the hashtag #SBheart and follow the Sunnybrook Twitter account (Sunnybrook).

Specifically, doctors will be performing a coronary artery bypass graft on a patient. The live tweeting will include photos of the surgery, short videos via Vine and additional heart health information.

The patient, a 57-year-old male with coronary artery disease, has consented to the live tweet and Dr. Gideon Cohen and his team from Sunnybrook’s Schulich Heart Centre will be performing the surgery.

This isn’t the first time a surgery has been live tweeted. As far back as June 2011 Ohio State University Medical Center tweeted a minimally invasive knee surgery along with live video streaming on U-Stream. Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston took things up a notch by broadcasting a brain surgery live on Twitter in May 2012. And in May 2013 doctors at UCLA performed the first live Vined surgery.

Sunnybrook says their heart surgery live-tweet will be a first for a Canadian hospital – but if the trend continues, you can bet it won’t be the last.